I have told this story before, but I received an email this morning from somebody in an identical situation.
And somehow, even though Wells Fargo did the very same thing to me, it made me a lot angrier once I heard that they are doing it to somebody else.
Four years ago, on August 23rd, 2008-- my wife of seven years and best friend of fourteen years-- died of breast cancer. Karen was thirty-three years old.
Now, losing a spouse is bad enough. There is a lot you have to deal with. And, don't ask me why- because this was really, very stupid of me- but I had a big life insurance policy for Karen. That is, if something happened to me, she would get a little over one million dollars. Accidental death or disease.
But I never bought life insurance for her. I would wait until she turned 50 or something, because if anybody was going to die young, it would be her beer-drinking, rock-climbing, motorcycle-riding husband.
Anyway, it didn't work out that way. Karen died and after she did, Wells Fargo ended up taking my house away.
Karen and I owned three homes. Two investment properties and our primary residence. The investment properties were purchased in my name and the primary was in Karen's name.
During her illness, our insurance company decided to drop us. After all, Karen had cancer, and insurance companies don't make money if they pay on every legitimate claim.
So they dropped us and I started liquidating assets when Karen was alive, to pay for her treatment. I sold our investment homes, and kept our primary residence, in which the mortgage was in Karen's name only. (I "owned" the investment property homes.)
Wells Fargo decided that losing my wife wasn't quite enough punishment, so they took my primary residence after my wife died.
Wells Fargo refused to speak to me about my mortgage. They wouldn't take my payments. I begged them to take my money and allow me to stay in the home. I just wanted to pay.
They were alerted to her demise because her credit report was alerted. So once they found out that Karen was dead, they changed the mortgage from her name to "The Estate of Karen George" and then said they couldn't speak to anyone about that change, but Karen.
Yes. Karen, my dearly departed-- the one who no longer gets mail. Customer service mockingly told me that if they couldn't speak to her, then they couldn't speak to anyone. (They knew she was dead; the customer service guy was having a laugh with the grieving widower.)
I won't write the whole story here, but I'll just paste Well's Fargo's latest "good deed" because the story below is almost identical to mine.
Now they are doing it to another family of a cancer victim.
Bank executives and lawyers-- my two favorite types of people in the world. Please sign the petition and help Gail.
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When Marjorie Gibson passed away from cancer, she left her house to her daughter, Gail, to raise her children and grandchildren. At 65, Gail works full-time to support her family, and can afford to make her monthly mortgage payments. But Wells Fargo won't let Gail make her payments, because they say the house belongs to Marjorie, even though Marjorie is dead. Now Wells Fargo is trying to foreclose on the home Gail's family has owned for two generations. When Wells Fargo sent Gail notice of foreclosure shortly after her mother’s death, she was shocked. Gail says she tried to explain to Wells Fargo that she now owns the home and wants to pay the mortgage, but Wells Fargo just says they'll look into it and never gives her any information. Gail says Wells Fargo claims to have spoken with her mother about the home as she lay stricken with cancer, but Gail cared for her ailing mother to the end and says Marjorie was too weak to speak to anyone. Gail has contacted Wells Fargo for six months to get more information on the payments needed to keep the house, and says they continue to refuse to speak to her while moving ever closer to foreclosure. She even sent the bank a check for $5,000 and says it was returned. Wells Fargo has already shown that it is responsive to public opinion. Just two months ago another family stopped foreclosure from the same bank after they got close to 180,000 signatures on Change.org. Gail is confident that if enough people sign her petition, she can get Wells Fargo to listen, too. |
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